Warren out at CFPB after Issa hearing?

posted at 1:30 pm on July 16, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

Elizabeth Warren will exit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before it officially launches, according to a single-sourced Bloomberg report last night. According to an unnamed “briefed” person, Obama will dump the controversial Warren for someone already working at the CFPB, and the announcement will come next week:

Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor, was appointed last fall by Obama to set up the consumer bureau until a director was named. Warren previously was head of the congressional watchdog panel overseeing the bank bailout.

This was one of those “temporary” assignments that an administration would eventually make permanent. Warren, however, became a lightning rod not just for her approach to the CFPB but also for her interaction with Congress. Called to testify in May, Warren insisted that the panel limit its questioning because of a prior engagement on her schedule. The prior engagements appear to have been a couple of internal meetings — and an interview with Vanity Fair.

With Congressional relations off to that kind of start, it’s no wonder that Republicans in the Senate have already made clear that they wouldn’t allow Warren to be confirmed:

The consumer bureau, which is to begin formal operations on July 21, was established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial- regulatory overhaul to fill what lawmakers said was a gap in oversight of products whose abuse contributed to the 2008 credit crisis, including mortgages and credit cards.

The bureau’s director requires confirmation by the Senate. After 44 Republican senators announced in May that they wouldn’t vote to approve any candidate to run the bureau without changes in its structure, analysts said the White House might have to resort to a temporary appointment during a congressional recess. Sixty of the 100 senators are effectively required to vote for a nomination due to procedural rules.

It’s no surprise that Obama wants to look for a replacement for his lightning-rod initial choice, especially after Warren’s appearance at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this week. Democrats tried distracting the committee by loudly demanding that Darrell Issa subpoena executives from large banks, but Issa instead focused on Warren and the ambiguous limitations on the CFPB’s power:

The hearing, called “Consumer Financial Protection Efforts: Answers Needed,” was supposed to look at the powers of the agency, which many Republicans hold in deep mistrust.

Issa, who said he wasn’t out to “micromanage” the bureau, which is housed in the Federal Reserve, but said he wanted to see if the agency was “properly designed and prepared.”

McHenry, on Thursday, said he wanted to know more about the types of financial products the bureau would target – insisting that those moves would cause uncertainty for investors and business leaders.

“I fear the actions by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that limit access to credit … would only further damage this troubling economy,” he said.

Bloomberg only offers the one, anonymous source for this story, which seems a little unusual — and weak. Under the circumstances, the decision wouldn’t be a surprise, but normally media outlets like a second source before publication. Either they trust this particular source more than most, or Bloomberg figures it’s inevitable anyway.

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Let’s hope it is true. No doubt the rest of the Obama pool of potential draftees and the nitwits already at CFPB all have the same brainless mindset, but every time we reject one of these idiots the world gets a little smarter.

The consumer bureau, which is to begin formal operations on July 21, was established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial- regulatory overhaul to fill what lawmakers said was a gap in oversight of products whose abuse contributed to the 2008 credit crisis, including mortgages and credit cards.

I just started Reckless Endangerment, those two should be in Jail for their role.

In order to fund Obamacare and the other opiates of Big Government dependency, the feds need to take 25 percent of GDP, now and forever: The “new normal.” It can’t be done. Look around you. The new normal’s already here: flat-line jobs market, negative equity, the dead parrot economy. What comes next will be profoundly abnormal. His name was Obamandias, King of Kings. Look upon his works, ye mighty, and despair. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.

Do they still teach Shelley in high school? Or just the “diversity manual” about “social justice” the Omaha Public Schools paid for with $130,000 of “stimulus” funding?

Don’t you know? She “studied financial markets and products” and taught bankruptcy law at Harvard. That’s the sum total of her experience. Her undergraduate degree is in psychology. She has never held a private sector job, nor a job in a regulatory agency.

The whole idea for the Bureau was hers, coming from a small article she wrote in Harvard magazine in 2007. So, of course, the idiots in the White House latched on to this idea and they wanted Warren to head the agency since she had dreamed it up in the first place.

Issa, who said he wasn’t out to “micromanage” the bureau, which is housed in the Federal Reserve, but said he wanted to see if the agency was “properly designed and prepared.”“The Federal Reserve is not transparent,” Issa said. “The Federal Reserve does resist any kind of congressional oversight and considers it unreasonable interference

Fantastic, another Fed tentacle created by the Frank-Dodd Bank Protection Act; in the name of the helpless consumers

People like this bho wants in his team is a major reason that some r’s be in dc on a daily basis while the rest are on the hundreds of recesses per year. bho will just do a recess appointment, though temporary, to see his people are in.
L

This is important, by the way. The new powers Congress gave the CFPB can only be exercised by the Director. So, until a Director is confirmed, the agency can only exercise the powers that were transferreed to it from the Fed and HUD, which are minor rulemaking authorities. Republicans insisted on this, as well as making the CFPB part of the Fed. Frank and Dodd’s original bill made CFPB a completely independent agency with powers that did not depend on having anyone confirmed by the Senate in charge of it. It pretty much completely abdicated any Congressional oversight of the agency. At least Republicans were able to get a few amendments to make it somewhat more accountable.

The organized Left really hasn’t gotten very much it wanted out of this Administration, especially when it comes to financial regulation. So they have rallied around Warren. Her nomination is sort of the last hill they are dying on.

Following the introduction of the legislation, Congress would have to pass the joint resolution with a supermajority of sworn members by August 15 of the same year. “If you don’t do that,” Cohen says, “Congress has no option, at all, to repeal the board.” Meanwhile, even if the board were successfully dissolved, IPAB would keep issuing its recommendations, which would still have the force of law, until 2020.

The protections erected around IPAB make it all but impossible to repeal. “We kind of joke about that,” says Cohen, “the idea that the whole bill comes down but the only thing that stays is IPAB, like the roach after the nuclear blast.”

Professor Elizabeth Warren joined the faculty of Harvard Law School in 1992 as the Robert Braucher Visiting Professor of Commercial Law and became the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law in 1995. She is the coauthor of ALL YOUR WORTH, just published in March and on the best-seller list. Her earlier book, THE TWO-INCOME TRAP: WHY MIDDLE CLASS MOTHERS AND FATHERS ARE GOING BROKE has been cited by senators and presidential candidates, and her earlier award-winning books include AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS: BANKRUPTCY AND CONSUMER LAW IN AMERICA, THE FRAGILE MIDDLE CLASS, BUSINESS BANKRUPTCY, and three leading casebooks.

Warren is the Vice-President of the American Law Institute and is on the Executive Committee of the National Bankruptcy Conference. She directed the National Bankruptcy Review Commissions study of federal bankruptcy laws and drafted its report to Congress. Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Professor Warren to the Judicial Education Committee of the Federal Judicial Center from 1990 to 1999. The National Law Journal named her one of the Fifty Most Influential Women Lawyers in America. Harvard students voted her the Sacks and Freund Award for teaching excellence.

Prior to teaching at Harvard, Professor Warren was the William A. Schnader Professor of Commercial Law at University of Pennsylvania School of Law and also taught at the University of Texas School of Law, University of Houston Law Center, University of Michigan and Rutgers Law School. We look forward to Ms. Warren’s commencement speech as she highly regarded not only as an academic and a legal scholar, but also as an inspiring and entertaining speaker.

I think there is some precedent that says a prior Congress cannot bind a future one this way.

It may also be possible to repeal Obamacare through the budget reconciliation process, which only requires 51 votes in the senate, and no cloture. Just like it was passed. SCOTUS would never go near a poitical question like that, and up hold Obamcare.

One has to wonder how many Communist are now working in the Federal Government. How many commies have high level positions in our government? For that matter is the Democrat party just a front group for Communist party?

It was all about framework. They don’t run the framework they just lay it down. Everything O and minions have been doing is to set up framework.

They know they will be gone and in reality all they can leave is framework that will last 50 years as people become dependent on the work that the frame provide. Medicare, Medicaid, now Obamacare is all framework that will last and has last decades and can never be undone in it’s entirely even with full repeal as there is framework that they are built on that people don’t even know was laid decades ago just to lay the new other framework on will remain.

The total framework in regulation and plans laid by Ms Warren will never be known. And in the next time the Democrat or the left republicans get in power that framework can be built on to end and do whatever they want. And people would wonder how did that happen. It was decades in the making.

Ed, it’s likely Warren’s demise has a lot to do with Obama’s fundraising efforts with the bankers. He has been skewering them at every turn in the road for his own political benefit. They are fed up. Warren’s recess appointment would doom any bridge building efforts.

With his numbers tanking and a real contest looming in 2012, Obama can’t afford any more enemies.

Having hired PhD’s with track records, engineers and other technical skill sets, it seems Obama hires friends and hires for loyalty.
He doesn’t hire people with track records of relevant accomplishments. Of course he is a loyal socialist with no skill set other than bloviating.

I just started Reckless Endangerment, those two should be in Jail for their role.

rob verdi on July 16, 2011 at 1:37 PM

And they should be sharing a cell with Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, Jaime Gorelick, Maxine Waters, and a few dozen other Democratic crooks and thieves who nearly took down our entire economy with their greed and corruption.

Warren eventually told the committee that the bureau is designed to help consumers answer whether they can afford something, and whether it was the best deal for them.
Why in the world do we need a bureau to help consumers understand if they can afford something?

Bloomberg has lately evolved into a Democratic news organ. An apologist for Obama and his policies, it is becoming increasingly unreliable as a neutral news source. But likely more reliable as a test site for WH press releases or memes.

Warren, was an acting ASSISTANT Director, who was ‘filling in for the Director in some undefined capacity.

Now, Obama is going to have an unappointed person, one that was hired by Warren, ‘take charge’.

CAN anyone in congress even request hearings from this person? Since this is now the ‘hired’ civil service person, do they even take responsibility for anything that the new agency is doing? I suspect none of this is in their job description and Obama will NEVER actually nominate, or appoint, anyone to the actual Director or Assistant Director positions.

Much easier to avoid those pesky congressional hearings if you have an agency with no one in charge. Well, I guess they could try to ask Bernanke about it, but he would likely just point fingers at the congress he hates and the Obama administration he protects.

It should be quite clear to anyone who has been paying attention for the last three years that there is NOBODY in the Fed or Treasury who knows anything about how the economy works: they are all a blathering bunch of field-proven incompetents!!!

I say cut their legs off: forbid them and their agencies from doing anything to anybody!!! Make them leave us completely alone, and cut their budget 25%-40%. Then it won’t matter who Obama appoints.

We Republicans better watch what we wish for. Once out of DC, Warren will be free to make her Senate run against Scott Brown in MA. And she will probably win in that ultra liberal state, as many have become disenchanted with Scott Brown.

Yeah, but she’ll have to beat Setti Warren…a Moonbatty Mayor of a Moonbat town. He’s like mini Obama squared. He’s like a junior Deval Patrick. The peeps of the town fell all over themselves to vote for him just because he is black. And like his Super-Pappy Zero, he’s only been Mayor for like 2 years!

Scott Brown is gonna get booted. The Dems in Mass are NOT gonna be caught with their knickers down again. And besides, those of us who are Conservative will be voting for no one or a Dem who has the guts to put a D after his name.

It would have been better to drive a stake through her heart, stuff her mouth with garlic, cut off her head, and burn the remains – although the idea of hanging her and other traitors along the banks of the Potomac to serve as a warning to others has much merit – all after a fair trial, of course.

This foul marxist whore should not be allowed anywhere near a policymaker, even to share an elevator.